Alicudi
Gérard Courant
2007 - 11 min - 16 mm - Noir & Blanc - France

With Nanni Moretti’s film “Caro diario/Dear Diary” as inspiration, Gérard Courant travels to the island of Alicudi in the South of Italy. The island has managed to resist modernisation longer than other places: most houses have neither electricity nor telephone or TV.
It seems like a paradise that’s been lost in time, but a closer look reveals also dark sides of the island such as the destruction of geological formations to enable electrification and illegal garbage dumps.
The Ciné Tract format with its tight technical restrictions forces Courant to explain the things he cannot capture on the hand-developed black & white film stock. He offers a comprehensive, authoritative voiceover that brings old-fashioned educational films to mind and that introduces him as the translator of the visual. But the choice of shooting on 16mm
is far from being old-fashioned: it reflects the island’s refusal of modernity for its own sake.